While most phones nowadays have a hotspot mode, there are still reasons to buy hotspots, especially with Verizon. Dedicated hotspots have better Wi-Fi range, stronger LTE signal, and support more simultaneous devices than a phone's hotspot mode does. For businesses, having a few hotspots around lets you extend your company's internet on the go without having to get into the complexity of partially reimbursing employees' cell phone plans. Verizon's new Jetpack MiFi 7730L hotspot ($199.99, or $49.99 with a two-year contract) is a significant leap beyond older devices. With an LTE category 9 modem and global LTE roaming, it's by far the best way to connect to the carrier's LTE network, and our new Editors' Choice for Verizon.

Physical Design and Interface

Made by Novatel, the MiFi 7730L is Verizon's first touch-screen hotspot. This isn't that huge a deal, as AT&T has had touch screens for a while now and Verizon has had color non-touch screens, but it's a nice addition. The device is also sleeker and classier than previous hotspots. Both the on-device UI and the web portal have gotten bold, clean refreshes and look better than other devices' portals.

The hotspot measures 4.3 by 2.6 by 0.7 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.4 ounces. On the front edge, there's a USB-C port and two relatively standard external antenna ports. On the back edge is the nano-SIM card slot, a USB-A port, and the power button. There's a chunky, removable 4,400mAh battery inside.

The USB-C port can also be used to connect a mass storage device like a USB stick or hard drive, to share over the network. Since there are very few USB-C flash drives, you'll probably need a female USB-A-to-male USB-C cable (available online for under $10) if you want to go this path. Attaching a large USB hard drive, I got read speeds of 11MBps—not great, but better than the speeds I've seen from microSD cards on other hotspots.

The USB-A port on the back is a bit of a decoy. It's just used to charge other devices off your hotspot, something the MiFi 6620L and AC791L can also do. You can set a point where the charging cuts off, to make sure that you don't completely deplete your hotspot's battery.

With the on-screen UI, you can see but not alter most of the device's settings. To change settings, you need to use the web portal, and you have plenty of standard options: GPS over Wi-Fi, manual DNS, VPN passthrough, IPv6, DMZ, MAC, and port filtering and port forwarding are all available. You can set up an isolated guest network as well. The device transmits 802.11ac Wi-Fi simultaneously on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, without forcing you to switch between them.

Like other Verizon hotspots, the 7730L is not meant to be your home internet connection. Data plans are just too expensive: Monthly plan prices start at 2GB for $40, 4GB for $50, 6GB for $60, and 8GB for $70, and go up to 100GB for $730/month.

T-Mobile offers you a lot more data for your money: 14GB for $65, for instance. But that won't satisfy people and corporations who want Verizon's coverage, as well as this hotspot's global LTE roaming capabilities.

Speed and Performance

The 7730L has the best modem, with the best frequency bands and the best speeds, of any Verizon hotspot. It's the first Verizon hotspot to support three-carrier aggregation, which enables faster speeds by combining different frequency bands. Within the US, it works on LTE bands 2, 4, 5, and 13.

It also has a broader range of LTE roaming bands than previous hotspots. It has roaming bands 3, 7, 20, 28 and 66—the first four are the most broadly used global LTE bands, and the last one is used by Freedom Mobile in Canada. Like all Verizon devices, the hotspot is sold unlocked, so you can use it with a foreign SIM to avoid roaming fees. (It won't work well with other US carriers, as it lacks their ideal frequency bands.)

In 10 tests in Manhattan and Brooklyn, the 7730L absolutely slaughtered the older 6620L on download speeds. Carrier aggregation seemed to make a big difference, as that isn't available on the older hotspot. The 7730 peaked at 90Mbps down at a location where the older hotspot got 41Mbps. In weak, congested conditions, the 7730 pulled out 3.8Mbps where the 6620 only managed 1.16Mbps. The newer hotspot was at least 50 percent faster than the older one in six of our ten tests. The difference really shows how much a newer modem matters.

Wi-Fi range is also terrific. We test hotspot range in a 150-foot corridor, and I made it all the way to the end of the corridor without any degradation in speed. That beats the range on any previous hotspot we've tested.

Battery life is good, but not as good as previous models. We got very inconsistent battery life across several tests, but it finally settled around 10-11 hours of streaming use. (It'll be more if you aren't transferring data all the time.) That's less than we saw on the AC791L (21 hours) and 6620L (15 hours), but more than double that of the cheaper MHS815L. It's a bit surprising, as this hotspot and the AC791L have just about the same size battery—perhaps superior performance also means greater power consumption.

Conclusions

Verizon has a good range of hotspots available: the MiFi 7730L, the AC791L, the older MiFi 6620L, and the lower-cost MHS815L. The 7730L has great Wi-Fi range and the best speeds on Verizon's network, with acceptable battery life. If you have the 6620L, MHS815L, or an older hotspot or modem, you will see very significant speed improvements by upgrading to the 7730L. We still recommend the AC791L if battery life is your absolute number one priority, but the 7730L's superior speeds make it our Editors' Choice.

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About the Author

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 13 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, hosts our One Cool Thing daily Web show, and writes opinions on tech and society.
Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer. Other than ... See Full Bio

Verizon Jetpack MiFi 7730L

Verizon Jetpack MiFi 7730L

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